Politics posts

“In our nation's 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump. He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He can never be trusted with power again. As citizens, we each have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution. That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.”

-- former vice-president Dick Cheney in his endorsement of Kamala Harris for president

When was the last time a former president or vice-president from one party endorsed the candidate for the other party? Ever? Curious who else will step up, now that Cheney has. (W. has said he won't make an endorsement.) What I like about the above? No punches pulled. Dems could learn from this. Niceties are for peacetime. 

“On any given day it is difficult to measure desperation. Polling offers a snapshot of what voters think, but not how the campaigns view the arc of the race. Official statements from campaign officials are rightly viewed with some skepticism.

'In the final weeks of an election, you should focus on what the campaigns do, rather than what they say. Pay particular attention to what they are spending money on. [And] there is nowhere Republicans are spending more than in the courts. In recent weeks they have filed a flurry of lawsuits targeting the voting process. They can call their voter suppression program whatever they please, but it is still a massive voter suppression effort.

”Consider this: when the Democratic National Convention began, there were 88 pro-voting lawsuits and 85 anti-voting lawsuits that had been filed during this election cycle. Three weeks later, anti-voting lawsuits now outpace pro-voting 99 to 90. Adding to the GOP's troubles is their dismal record of success. By the first night of the DNC, pro-voting forces had won 167 cases and lost 73. That record is now 184 wins and 76 losses.

“Republicans are in real electoral trouble and they have turned to the courts to bail them out. And with less than 60 days until the election, that strategy is failing.”

-- Voting rights attorney Marc Elias in his newsletter today. More here. I hope he's right.

“I believe that leaders must display dignity.
I believe that leaders must tell the truth.
I believe that leaders should be able to laugh at themselves.
I believe that leaders must care for, and love, the people they are leading.
I believe that leaders must possess knowledge and expertise but with the full awareness that none of us has all the answers—and in fact some of the best answers come from members of the team.”

-- NBA coach and former NBA star Steve Kerr last night at the Democratic National Convention. Each one has a negative example, and everyone knows who that is. Even he knows who that is.

MUSK: People were asking me in California, “Are you worried about a nuclear cloud coming from Japan?” I am like no, that's crazy. It is actually, it is not even dangerous in Fukushima. I flew there and ate locally grown vegetables on TV to prove it. ... Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed but now they are full cities again.

TRUMP: That's great, that's great.

MUSK: It is not as scary as people think, basically. ...

TRUMP: We will have to rebrand it. We will name it after you or something.

-- Part of the interview/conversation between Elon Musk and Donald Trump last night on Musk's platform, X, which was initially marred by technical issues, and subsequently marred by the two of them talking. The above is taken from The Independent, which adds, for those like Musk who need it, “America dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, destroying the city and killing 140,000 people. Three days later, it nuked Nagasaki and killed 70,000 more people.” Tom Nichols of The Atlantic wrote in response: “I am as big a fan of nuclear power as there is but this is a completely dumbass thing to say.”

Sunday morning, a week ago, I turned on the radio during morning ablutions and these were the first words—literally, seriously, the first words—I heard on NPR's “Weekend Edition”:

...Joe Biden's age...

I snapped it off. No way. Fuck you. I was so sick of the drumbeat—from Democratic donors, politicians, friends, but mostly from the mainstream media, the supposedly objective media, who kept sticking its fat fingers into the Democratic race while letting a brat-tryant mewl away forever for the Republicans, normalizing his rants every day. I was so sick of all of this that I couldn't deal. It felt like “...but her emails” all over again. I've seen this movie and I hated it the first time. So: off. 

A few hours later, it was all moot. Pres. Joe Biden sent out the letter withdrawing from the 2024 presidential race; a short time later he endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris.

This is, by the way, exactly what I wanted in 2019. In August 2020, when Joe picked Kamala, I wrote about it in a post titled “It's Kamala!” and included an old tweet from 2019 laying out my wishlist. That tweet is now without formating since I left Twitter (which isn't even Twitter anymore) in 2022 but the words are still there:

Here's what Biden needs to do.
Don't ignore the age thing.
Talk up the extraordinary circumstance with Trump—how he's destroying America and its place in the world. Say that's why he's running. Then pledge to serve only one term.
Pick Kamala as VP.

— Erik Lundegaard September 13, 2019

So it's exactly what I wanted but not exactly how I wanted it. I didn't figure on Jan. 6, and I didn't figure that the Republicans would be so cowardly and opportunistic that they'd let a man who tried to end the great American experiment back into the room (to lead it), but JFC are they cowardly and opportunistic. And I didn't figure the Biden administration wouldn't put Kamala out there. I remember early in his administration, spring 2021, wondering, “Why are they burying her? She's the next stage. Let's go!” But wasn't happening. He thought he could do the second term and I gave him the benefit of the doubt. He was the only one who'd beaten Trump. All those GOP hopefuls in 2015-16 fell by the wayside, and Hillary, poor Hillary, too much arrayed against her. Too many dick pics, too much Russia, too much Comey. But Joe did it. I also figured the country was less ageist than racist/sexist. I still figure that.

Here's mainly what I figured. I figured Joe would get us past the crisis point. Trump, and American fascism, wouldn't be a threat anymore. But here we are. 

I haven't been writing much about the election. I haven't been paying the usual attention. It's been a shitty year and I don't have the emotional reserves for it. But maybe this move will help. Everyone else seems recharged, maybe I will be. We'll see.

I liked the cessation of the drumbeat. For the month prior, it was: Old is Joe, gotta go. Now there are other drumbeats, some just as stupid, but not as insistent, and with different rhythms. We'll see. 

I also felt something lift in me, some sense of responsibility for it all. Even though it's the result I wanted, back in 2019, it's not the path I wanted, so some part of me is telling the George Clooneys of the world: OK, we'll see how it goes. Good luck, assholes. Fingers crossed. But I like the energy. We'll see.

My kingdom for a serious media.

One of the major candidates for president of the United States said this, exactly this, last night in West Palm Beach, Florida:

“Christians, get out and vote! Just this time. You won't have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what? It'll be fixed, it'll be fine. You won't have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians. I love you, Christians. I'm a Christian.* I love you, get out, you got to get out and vote. In four years, you don't have to vote again. We'll have it fixed so good you're not gonna have to vote.”

* I initially heard this as “I'm not Christian” and it still could be that, since Trump has a tendency to say the quiet parts out loud.

Waiting to see if this makes it into The New York Times, Washington Post, NPR or The Wall Street Journal. In a serious country, you think it would. Feels, I don't know, newsworthy: LEADING CANDIDATE PROMISES END TO AMERICAN DEMOCRACY.

Will update if any news org decides this is news.

ADDENDUM: The NY Times did a story on it today, and for a hot minute it was on their main page, about half a dozen stories down. A few hours later it's off the main page and just part of a series of articles on the 2024 election: MN Gov. calls Trump and Vance 'weird people'; Harris: 'We are the underdogs'; J.D. Vance hits back at Jennifer Anniston and defends 'childless cat lady' remarks; Peter Thiel elated by Vance pick; and, you know, this one: Trump tells Christians 'you won't have to vote anymore' if he's elected. Cuz those are all the same, none more important than any other. 

ADDENDUM II: No words, NPR. 

I think NPR should do a piece on this. The “how to” of it. I'm curious how they got there. Is this interpretation something Trump said, his campaign said, his supporters said, or did NPR read the tea leaves for the most anodyne explanation? Since, you know, no word quite describes Trump like anodyne. JFC.

“Let me be very clear as to why I support President Biden. He is the first president in American history to stand with workers on a picket line. He has lowered the cost of prescription drugs, he's rebuilding our infrastructure, and we have put money into combating climate change. Five million Americans have student debt relief. He has a record to run on. The ideas he's talking about for his first 100 days if reelected I believe will resonate with the middle class in this country.”

-- Sen. Bernie Sanders last night on “The Colbert Show”

Earlier this year I received a text from a woman running for office in a Democratic primary somewhere. Apologies I’m not more specific, but I quickly deleted it, or STOPped it, or STOP TO QUITted it, so I never got all the details. All I knew was she was running “against the odds,” she said, but she’s running anyway, damnit.

And that’s what made me lose interest.

I flashed back to February 2020 when I met my friends A. and B. for drinks in Seattle. All three of us are white, liberal, 50+, politically engaged and/or (in my case) vaguely aware; we’re all journalists or journalist-adjacent; and the conversation inevitably turned to the Washington state primary for the upcoming presidential election—one of the most consequential elections in our history. 

A. and B. are more politically engaged than I. Put it this way: They actually watched the primary debates to figure out which candidate aligned best with their vision of where the country should be heading. At the restaurant, they wrangled this out: Well, this candidate says this, and the other says the other, and that’s why I support the other. Washington is a mail-in ballot state, with ballots due in early March, and neither had filled out theirs yet, but I think one leaned Elizabeth Warren and the other Bernie.

And at some point they asked me who I planned to vote for.

“I already voted,” I said.

“Who?”

“Biden.”

Long pause.

“Well, you just threw your vote away.”

“Yeah, he’s already out of it.”

This was before the South Carolina primary on February 29, when Black voters saved Biden’s campaign, and (you could argue), the United States of America—let alone March 3, Super Tuesday, when ditto. I think it was before Nevada, too. Which means we’d had two contests, Iowa and New Hampshire, and in both Bernie had come out on top, with Pete Buttigieg a close second, and either Warren or Amy Klobuchar a close third. Biden had finished a distant fourth in Iowa and a distant fifth in New Hampshire. He was done. I’d thrown away my vote.

I should add: I didn’t necessarily think they were wrong. But among the Democrats running, I knew Biden was the best bet to beat Trump. Everything else was just blather. 

Who … can … win?

That’s the question Democrats don’t ask themselves nearly enough. Here’s another question Dems should be asking themselves: Who’s the Kirk?

OK, I’m going to go even further back now, to around 2000, when I used to go to the post office fairly regularly. There, I often had conversations with one of the employees, a super smart, super friendly guy, about movies and politics. Maybe this was around the 2000 election, I don’t remember. All I remember is what he said: If you want to figure out who’s going to win a presidential election, ask yourself this: Who’s the Kirk and who’s the Spock? Because Kirk wins.

My immediate reaction was “Naw, it’s not that simple.” But then, I began to backtrack.

• 2000: Al Gore vs. George W. Bush. Gore is the epitome of Spock. Bush wins.
• 1996: Bill Clinton vs. Bob Dole. Clinton is clearly Kirk-esque. Clinton wins.
• 1992: Bill Clinton vs. George H.W. Bush. Clinton: Kirk. Clinton wins.
• 1988: Michael Dukakis vs. George H.W.  Bush. Did I say Al Gore was the epitome of Spock? Apologies. I forgot about Dukakis. Bush wins.

“Damn,” I said.

And since then? John Kerry was another classic Spock in 2004—and lost. Obama muddled the metaphor a bit, since he tends Spock with some Kirk swagger. I mean, Mitt Romney was definitely no Kirk but you could argue John McCain was, so 2008 was the only time the post-office guy’s handicap didn’t work. Otherwise he’s been dead on. 

Admittedly, some years, it’s tough to parse the Kirk-Spock divide—2020, for example, seemed more good Capt. Kirk vs. Evil “Enemy Within” Kirk—so for the past 10 years I tend to take a step back, squint, and ask: OK, if these two candidates were running for high school student body president, who would win? Most Americans take it as seriously as that. And that’s why I was so worried in 2016. In one corner, you had the girl with a perfect attendance record, who showed up every day to every class, got straight A’s, and maybe even reminded the teacher when they forgot to assign homework. And in the other? The rich guy who threw keggers at his house.

I’m still worried about 2024, but at least Biden seems the right candidate for the Dems. He’s Kirk with a touch of McCoy. The other guy, “Enemy Within” Kirk, is crazier than ever. He’s ready to take the Enterprise down with him as he rants away into the viewscreen.

And my friends A. and B.? The latter is in California now, and I’m not sure which way he’s leaning. But A. is still in Seattle and hasn’t changed much. On Instagram he recently posted a selfie of himself mailing in his ballot. “Uncommitted,” he wrote. Another winning choice. Boldly going where Democrats have always gone before.

They released the Hunter Biden transcript on Thursday, and amid the bloviating there's some expert trolling of Donald Trump and the monstrously hypocritical Republican party by Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA). Warmed my heart.

SWALWELL: Any time your father was in government, prior to the Presidency or before, did he ever operate a hotel?

BIDEN: No, he has never operated a hotel.

SWALWELL: So he's never operated a hotel where foreign nationals spent millions at that hotel while he was in office?

BIDEN: No, he has not.

SWALWELL: Did your father ever employ in the Oval Office any direct family member to also work in the Oval Office?

BIDEN: My father has never employed any direct family members, to my knowledge.

SWALWELL: While your father was President, did anyone in the family receive 41 trademarks from China?

BIDEN: No.

SWALWELL: As President and the leader of the party, has your father ever tried to install as the chairperson of the party a daughter-in-law or anyone else in the family?

BIDEN: No. And I don't think that anyone in my family would be crazy enough to want to be the chairperson of the DNC.

SWALWELL: Has your father ever in his time as an adult been fined $355 million by any State that he worked in?

BIDEN: No, he has not, thank God.

SWALWELL: Anyone in your family ever strike a multibillion dollar deal with the Saudi Government while your father was in office?

BIDEN: No.

SWALWELL: That's all I've got.

Encore. 

“For the life of me, I do not understand how you can go to the trouble of campaigning, raising money, going to events, talking to people, coming to this town as a member of a party who allegedly stands for something ... and then do nothing about it. One thing: I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing — one — that I can go campaign on and say we did. One!”

-- Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), on the House floor in November. “He got no answer,” says Jennifer Rubin in her op-ed “The GOP's blunders take their toll.” Sad part is it's not tolling hard enough for them. “Most Republicans voted against the overwhelmingly popular infrastructure bill. Now they routinely claim credit for it. Only occasionally do they get called out for hypocrisy,” Rubin writes. “As with infrastructure, Republicans have largely escaped blame for causing economic havoc thanks to Democratic votes for keeping the government open and avoiding a default on the debt.” The legit media is really to blame for this. It'll never get better as long as they pretend both sides are culpable, or ascribe blame to an entity called “Congress.” 

“A shape-shifting, flip-flopping, over-promising, self-serving politician is nothing new. Where Mr. McCarthy truly distinguished himself was in his willingness and ability to debase himself in the service of Donald Trump — even as he occasionally pretended to still have a spine. 'My Kevin,' as Mr. Trump so delighted in calling him, certainly did his part to aid Mr. Trump's political revival after the Jan. 6 sacking of the Capitol. In a turnaround so dramatic it must have given him whiplash, Mr. McCarthy went from saying that Mr. Trump needed to 'accept his share of responsibility' for his role in the attack to, some weeks later, slinking down to Mar-a-Lago for a grotesque photo op with the former president. ...

”By empowering the most extreme elements of the Republican conference, he made an already fractured, fractious chamber even more dysfunctional. Worse, by shoring up Mr. Trump after Jan. 6, he helped put America back on a crash course with a dangerous, antidemocratic demagogue looking for political revenge. ...

“Thanks a lot, Kev. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.”

-- Michelle Cottle, “Was It Worth It, Kevin?” The New York Times Opinion page

My questions about his resignation revolve around whether Mike Johnson is paying attention—how can he not be?—and what lessons he's drawing. I get the feeling he's drawing the wrongs ones. As for Kev: Why now? Why not stick it out for another year? He says he plans to stay in GOP politics, but how? In supporting more centrist candidates or in continuing to be lickspittle and lackey to the crew that undid him?

“It's worth reflecting on how Republicans got to a place where they are about to nominate someone who is a frequent flier in the American court system, facing 91 criminal charges spanning four state and federal indictments. For one thing, it didn't help that nobody in the GOP field ever seriously took him on—even after January 6, when Trump sicced his supporters on the Capitol. But they also failed to highlight that Trumpism doesn't necessarily scale, as the 2022 midterms proved. In August, polling showed that only 63% of Republican voters wanted Trump ”to run again.“ But instead of making a case as to why they were a viable alternative to Trump, the non-Trump field treated the ex-president with kid gloves; they almost completely ignored the orange gorilla in the room and instead bickered with each other—so much so that they appear to have lost the plot entirely.”

Molly Jong-Fast, “Imagine If 2024 Republicans Actually Tried Taking on Trump,” on the Vanity Fair site. As I noted on Threads, yesterday was a year from the day after the 2024 election. So get ready to fight the fucker. Because the GOP is too weak and un-American to do it. 

“You don't give a no-jail plea deal unless that person's got something very good to say that will help your case against the others.”

-- former NJ govenor, federal prosecutor and current GOP presidential candidate Chris Christie after it was learned today that one-time Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanors (for six years of probation) in the Georgia RICO case focusing on Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election results there. The New York Times say it's “the first time that anyone who was closely tied to his attempts to stay in power had reached a cooperation deal with the authorities.”

It's been a busy month so I apologize for neglecting the fourth Trump indictment—the RICO case in Atlanta with his 17 or 18 co-conspirators. I did like this retweet from George Conway that he reposted on Post. (Yes, retweet reposted on Post. Sue me.)

I told my cousin Amy, a longtime Phillies fan, that Philadelphia has to get off the schnied. 

Jokes aside, it's still up to GOP voters, and GOP politicians, to take it all seriously. We know what Trump is; we've known that forever, and he'll never not be that way. But we weren't always this way. Rush and Fox News forged the path and all of it has to be owned up to, particularly by mainstream media outlets such as NYT and NPR, who have ignored it for way too long. It's all about the how, though, and no one has the answer. I certainly don't. But a few more GOP leaders actually showing leadership might help. 

I believe I first heard about Harry Belatonte from Archie Bunker on an episode of “All in the Family.” I remember the line, I just don't remember what prompted it:

“Harvey Belafonte ain't black. He's just a good lookin' white guy dipped in caramel!”

My mother or father (or both) may have laughed at the line, which I didn't get at all. Who is Harry Belafonte? Why is he not black? Oh, he is black? So why did Archie say it? Why is that funny?

I grew up in the '70s, not Belafonte's heyday, and I didn't see either “Buck and the Preacher” or “Uptown Saturday Night,” so where did I next come across him? Somewhere in the '80s. Through...

•  His daughter Shari?
• “Beetlejuice,” featuring “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)” and (my personal favorite) “Jump in the Line”?
• “Parting the Waters” by Taylor Branch?

That's part of the irony of Archie's line: that good-looking white guy dipped in caramel was all over the Civil Rights Movement. He was a front-line man. He was a race man. In the index to Branch's book, under “Belafonte, Harry,” these are some of the subcategories:

• Albany Movement and
• Atlanta concerts of
• Birmingham campaign and
• Freedom Rides and
• King's imprisonments and
• King's meetings with
• March on Washington and
• 1960 elections and
• R. Kennedy's meeting with
• SNCC and
• voter registration and

Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s great 1996 New Yorker profile of Belafonte begins with that week in Feb. 1968 when Belafonte hosted “The Tonight Show” for the vacationing Johnny Carson. At the time, Gates was a young college student, radicalized, and Belfaonte didn't disappoint. He brought the truth. He talked bluntly about race and power. He welcomed guests such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert Kennedy. It seem an era of possibilities. And within four months both men were dead of assassin's bullets. One wonders how '68 didn't break him. How do you deal with all that? How do you go on?

From Gates' profile, I learned that in the late 1940s Belafonte was friends and rivals with Sidney Poitier at the American Negro Theatre in Harlem, and the two men were befriended by the already legendary Paul Robeson, and all three would meet a bar on Fifth Avenue off of 125th Street and drink and talk. How is there not a play about that? “One Night in Miami” but in Harlem in the late 1940s. “He was very fond of Harry,” Poitier said of Robeson. “And Harry loved him.”

While Poitier was starring in Hollywood movies by 1950, Belafonte wound up with another path to stardom. Here he is on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1956. It's a year after Emmett Till. He's shirtless but for a vest, and gorgeous, and romantic, and one can only imagine how this fucked up the racists of the world—not to mention their wives.

He had six gold albums between 1956 and 1961. He had #1 singles in the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium. He had TV specials and sang with Odetta. And he organized.

I didn't know until recently that the whole “DAAAYYYY-O” thing was about laborers; and I didn't figure out until writing this that “Mr. Tally Man” was just the guy who tallied the bananas that the laborers brought in. I thought it was a spectre of some kind. But it's just another way of saying “accountant.” 

Everyone always talks about lowering the ladder for those coming after you. Belafonte manned the ladder. He built more ladders. He wondered why others weren't manning and building more ladders. He spent a lifetime doing this.